What changed on the day that changed everything?
Five years ago, Vanity Fair editor Graydon Carter declared that 9/11 marked the “death of irony.” Irony has proven rather hard to kill, however, and — somewhat ironically — it is right around this time of year that the little bugger seems to gain strength.
Take, for example, this column in The Australian by Rosemary Neil. Neil chooses to illustrate her thesis — that “in the post-9/11 era, truth has become more compelling than fiction” — with statistics showing “sales of adult fiction fell [in Australia] from 29 per cent of book sales in 2002-03 to 25 per cent of book sales in 2003-04.” (Wasn’t 2002-03 “post-9/11″?) And yet she also includes an interview with a publisher who says that “our fiction figures are better than they have been for a long time,” plus a look at some of the novelists who have incorporated themes of terrorism into their recent works… of fiction.
Even more puzzling is Neil’s conclusion:
“September 11 has highlighted how serious fiction no longer occupies the hallowed position it once did in our culture. Despite attempts by writers of the stature of McEwan and Updike, we still await the great novel about the 21st century’s age of terror.”
If serious fiction is not all that important any more, why are we waiting for that great novel? And if, as she also contends, escapism has become passé, why is it that when newly serious, non-escapist people do buy a novel, it is very often about an obscure Catholic conspiracy or a young wizard’s adventures at private school? And why did fiction wait for 9/11 to give up the ghost, when there were plenty of other, equally calamitous global upheavals throughout the past century that could have finished it off just as easily?
Irony may be flourishing, but perspective has certainly taken a hit.
(Thanks to the equally skeptical Literary Saloon for the link.)
Related links:
Read Rosemary Neil’s piece in The Australian
